This disabled Jacksonville veteran is a Wall Street Warfighter

Monday

May 28, 2012 at 12:04 AM

William Browning

Jerry Majetich has a second-floor office off Park Street in Jacksonville. He parks out back most mornings, walks up the stairs, checks his email, makes a couple of conference calls, then starts his day.

He is a vice president of a small institutional equity broker-dealer and does the things you would expect. He researches. He networks. He travels a lot. He works with the sales team. All normal, run-of-the-mill business stuff.

Except for Majetich, it is not.

Majetich is a disabled veteran. He has a disfigured face, prosthetic ears, no hair, scars across his head and a nub for a right hand. Despite those injuries, he is working in a field he wants. On Memorial Day, he wants the same for others who have been injured serving their country. He certainly knows how hard it can be.

His injury happened on Oct. 29, 2005, in Iraq.

At the time, he was an Army staff sergeant working in psychological operations. He and four other soldiers, riding in a Humvee, were hit by an explosive device loaded with 50 gallons of propane on top of two artillery shells. Two of the five men - Sgt. Shaker Guy, 23, and Capt. Raymond Hill, 39 - died.

Majetich was brought to Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas. Around Christmas, he woke up.

"The first time I saw myself in the mirror, it was frightening," he said.

He went through more than 60 surgeries during a 22-month span.

After retiring from the military in 2007 and putting that 20-year career behind him, things then got worse. He got divorced. And, suddenly a 40-year-old single father to three girls, he couldn't find work.

The U.S. Department of Labor's recent numbers show that in late 2011, the average unemployment rate for veterans who came home from Iraq and Afghanistan was 12.1 percent.

For Majetich - who has a college degree and strong military background - the job search was harder because of his injuries.

"Obviously, my physical appearance caused problems," he said. "It was [offputting] to people. Now, no one is going to say it up front, but you can tell when you talk to people."

He had moved to the First Coast unemployed with his youngest daughter when in early 2010 he heard about the Wall Street Warfighters program.

Based in Pennsylvania, it is a six-month course that trains, licenses and helps place disabled veterans who want to work in finance. Majetich, who spent time as an accountant in the Army, applied and was accepted. He completed the program in December 2010.

"They gave me what I needed," he said.

Lawrence Doll helped begin the nonprofit Wall Street Warfighters program in 2008. Doll, a Vietnam veteran who suffered two severe leg injuries during his tour, wanted to help disabled veterans get into finance.

"If we as a nation don't take care of the young men and women, they are going to stop volunteering," he said.

Two years before starting Wall Street Warfighters, Doll founded Drexel Hamilton, a for-profit broker-dealer that today has 48 employees and houses the Warfighters program. Drexel Hamilton was founded on the idea of helping disabled veterans find meaningful employment, Doll said. Twenty percent of Drexel Hamilton's profits go to keeping Wall Street Warfighters running. It costs $35,000 to put one veteran through the program. That amount goes to housing, travel and incidentals.

The eventual goal, Doll said, is to have 24 veterans completing the program each year.

Of the 29 veterans who have finished the program, all have found employment. Nine have gotten jobs with Drexel Hamilton. One of those is Majetich, who is now 42.

Doll stresses that the men and women who finish the program can work anywhere.

"We just want them to work," he said. "We just want to provide them with the tools to enter the workforce."

Majetich took his tools to Drexel Hamilton because it allows him, he said, to help wounded veterans like himself.

Today, as America honors its fallen soldiers, Majetich sees it as a daily respect for those who have lost their lives, those who continue to serve and those who have transitioned back into civilian life.

"For Memorial Day, I'll do the same thing I do every day - make sure that the men and women who come back have the same opportunities that I do," he said. "It's a lifelong, year-round mission."

william.browning@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4619

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